


we sleep in secret places

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cunnilingus, F/F, Finger Sucking, Fisting, Food, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rope Bondage, Sex Magic, Spanking, Temperature Play, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Fisting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Merrill and Isabela through the years, through friends and family and the problem of having sea-legs on land: always braced for the next wave to hit, for the next thing that will knock you down. There’s a safety in constant movement, any traveling Dalish can tell you that, but that only works as long as you have family at your back.





	we sleep in secret places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redhandsredribbons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhandsredribbons/gifts).



> For the prompt: Merribela fisting with assertive top!Merrill receiving Isabela's hand.
> 
> Many thanks to [placentalmammal](http://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal) and [ialpiriel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel) for betaing and dealing with my occasional wild yelling of "how did a fisting prompt get this long!!!!"

They’ve drunk their way through the Hanged Man’s brews and all of Isabela’s cheerfully stolen bottles. Fenris grumbles about the theft, but Merrill knows Fenris is never quite as cranky as he pretends; he lets them leave, after all. And he smiles, even when he pretends not to, cracking right back into a scowl if he thinks she’s noticed, so Merrill always pretends not to either. It’s only polite, after all.

Tonight they’re in the Hanged Man, full moon dipping low and peeping through the door in brightwork slices. It’s the kind of cool-dank night where they sag against one another like fallen trees, Isabela’s laughter rippling the air as she sweeps her winnings into her arms.

“Ooh, I’m feeling _lucky_ tonight,” Isabela purrs, stroking Merrill’s hair. She twists and teases, fingers playing along the edge of Merrill’s ear, and Merrill arches into it like a sunflower tracking the solar swing.

Anders rolls his eyes, throwing his cards on the table. He makes a face as his elbow lands in a puddle of beer, sopping up his sleeve. “You’ve gotten better at cheating, you mean.”

Isabela flashes a bright-knife smile. “Ah-ah, you know the rules. If it’s not _caught_ —”

“—it doesn’t _count_ ,” he finishes wearily.

Hawke presses herself against Isabela’s bosom, all squished cleavage and pleading eyes. “Now that you’ve taken my coin, buy a lady a beer?”

“For a lady? Of course.” Isabela chuckles, squeezing her arm around Merrill. “Corff! A raspberry wit for the lady! And whatever you scrape off the bung for this one!” she adds, thumping the top of Hawke’s head.

“Ow! You absolute _tyrant.”_ Hawke rubs her head ruefully, straightening up to kiss Isabela’s cheek.

(Merrill’s asked if Hawke and Isabela have ever, if Merrill might be intruding, if Merrill might join— but Hawke laughed it off, easy as raindrops, and started a convoluted story about appetite and hunger and pastries. It took Merrill a while to realize that Hawke was talking about _sex_ , not food, and how Hawke thought Isabela was perfectly lovely but Hawke was never hungry for anyone. Really, it would have saved them both some time if Hawke had just said ‘ace’ and was done with it.)

The beer arrives in a mostly-clean glass, darkish amber with foam tipping up the sides. Merrill takes a deep sniff before drinking. The malt tickles her throat, the raspberries hitting hard above the nose as Merill giggles, licking her lips. Hawke juts her lower lip into a wiggling shelf, eyes pleading, so Merrill slides the glass to her and they alternate sips.

Isabela continues with her cards and Merrill nibbles her tongue, counting every hand and finally sighing when Isabela wins yet again.

“How do you do it?” Merrill blurts.

Isabela raises an eyebrow, grinning. “Well. Take a firm hand, and don’t be afraid to steer hard—”

“Isabela!” Aveline interrupts, decidedly more pink than usual beneath her freckles. She looks rather like she got too much sun, except her nose isn’t peeling. Isabela calls her a mountain of a woman but Merrill knows mountains erode, worn by wind and time and scoured to bleached cliffs of bone. Aveline’s a tree, deep roots that crack stone. They have been uprooted, all of them, but Aveline’s sunk into this new soil. She’s their anchor and their shield.

“I was speaking of sailing!” Isabela beams, apparently finished, but waits until Aveline’s in mid-sip and adds, “Oh, and sex too.”

Aveline sputters.

Merrill dodges Aveline’s spray, addresses Isabela. “But really, how do you win?”

Isabela leans close enough that Merrill smells the warm beer on her breath, the lingering salt-smell and leather that always surrounds her. “Never gamble anything you can’t afford to lose, kitten.”

Merrill already lost her heart, so plays for a kiss. Win or lose, it’s all the same— and at least she can share the spoils.

She loses valiantly.

Isabela kisses her breathless, then chuckles, ”Later, I’ll teach you how to do body shots.”

Merrill knows better than to gamble things she can’t afford to lose, but she already lost her heart, so the rest of her might as well follow.

. . .

Isabela walks her home, from the song-strewn streets of the taverns to the quieter mess of Lowtown, fat sows and stray dogs scavenging amidst the gutters. The olfactory cacophony quiets as they reach the alienage, ripples into quiet stillness beneath the sweet green spread of the vhenadahl. Someone has painted it red and white, red and white, blood and foam and sunlight, geometric patterns that match no Dalish tradition but perhaps mean something else to these city elves. Merrill supposes she should ask, sometime— but with her heart so full of the past she’s never sure she has further room for the present, not when Isabela’s own salt-rimed secrets are buried in skin, in laughter, in a thousand thoughtless smiles that rattle her pockets like copper coins. Merrill has so much to learn already.

She kisses Isabela sweet and warm inside the shelter of her little house, tugs her bodice and pulls her to the bed. There’s nothing between them but skin and breath, and oh, but oh Isabela is lovely in the light. She’s lovely in any light, all warm curves and the silver shine of old scars against her dark skin. Isabela strips herself like it’s a race, but she takes her time with Merrill. Licks her tongue against the edge of Merrill’s neck, lapping like seafoam against the shore.

“Kitten, are you sure…?” Her eyes gleam warm and bright, like sherry in a glass. Merrill knows this is a promise, this is a fight, this is more than she has the right to ask for.

“I want to love you, as much as you’ll let me.” Merrill drops the words petal-soft and sweet, tracing her fingers along Isabela’s jaw, touching her thumb to the piercing beneath her lip. “You’re my best friend and I want to make you feel good. _I_ want to feel good.”

Isabela chuckles, a warm, slow roll of her hip as she presses herself against Merrill’s thigh, her arms strong as her body arches over Merrill’s like the night sky, like a constellation of warmth and want. “I don’t do love very well, kitten. But I can make you feel good. What would you like?”

“I like pain— a little, not a lot.” Merrill smiles, giggles as Isabela’s hands peel up her shirt. Arches her back, hips wriggling into the lumpy mattress to help Isabela pull the shirt overhead. “If you spanked me, that would be just right. Also your hands are so lovely, I’d love your fingers in me. Oh! And talk to me. I love the things you say, all sweet and dirty. Like muddy flowers.”

“Mm.” Isabela gnaws at her collarbone, sucks a wet and purple bruise into the flesh as Merrill groans. There are so many little scars and nicks across her flesh, tiny prices paid for blood and power and knowledge, and this is one more pain among the many, more sweetly paid than most. “Do you like taking orders?”

Merrill scrunches her nose, thinking about that. “Nooo-o-o? I don’t like that so much. I prefer giving them, rather.”

Isabela laughs. “Well, from you? I suppose I can take orders. If I do a good job, what do I get?”

Merrill laughs, arching up to kiss Isabela’s sternum, then to nip the hard bud of Isabela’s nipple. “I can go down on you! Fingers, mouth, tongue…”

“Mm. Lots of tongue on my clit and we have a deal, kitten.”

Merrill kisses Isabela’s breast, flicks her tongue over the gold studs winking there. Isabela is pierced and lovely in so many places beyond the obvious, and Merrill loves exploring. The metal barbells are hard beneath her teeth, a clicking contrast after the hard nub of flesh. Merrill maps her body, hills and valleys, all the contours of skin. Isabela deserves to be touched gentle, soft and sweet, but when Merrill dips her fingers low— and oh, Isabela has a piercing _there_ too, how lovely— Isabela ruts against her hand, hard, harder, the bone of her pubis grinding into Merrill’s palm.

“Oh, I think it’s time for a spanking,” Merrill laughs.

Isabela spills laughter as she rolls back, sitting on the edge of the bed with her feet flat on the floor. “It’s _always_ time for a good spanking, sweetness. Now come put your pretty arse over my lap.” She pats her knee invitingly, and Merrill wriggles her way into place. 

The cover is thin and scratchy against Merrill’s knees. She spreads her elbows wide, props her chin onto her stacked hands. Wiggles her toes into the blanket.

“Comfy?”

“Mhm. I like feeling exposed.” Her cunt feels cool and slick with nothing between her and the world at all. No smallclothes, no blankets, no seat— nothing but delicious exposure. “I might tip onto my face though.”

Isabela sets her palm on Merrill’s back, and Merrill wriggles into it. “Need to adjust?”

Merrill nods before realizing Isabela can’t actually see that very well, and says, “Yes.” She slides back, belly slung between Isabela’s thighs and her toes trailing off the edge of the bed. Much more stable like this, though she shivers in anticipation as Isabela pats her arse. Just the barest flick of her fingers against the skin, not even enough to sting. Merrill bites down a giggle.

“Tickles, does it? Would you like some more?” Isabela asks, and her hand’s a soothing warmth, presence without weight.

“Yes please. A little harder,” Merrill says.

Isabela works her way up slowly, a gentle escalation from light pats, barely enough to stir the fluff off a dandelion, to fuller swings, the full weight of her palm smacking into the curve of the buttock. Merrill cries out, sighing into the blanket and mouth hanging open. Nothing fast, only the steady repetition of impact, flesh on skin, skin on flesh. Isabela starts moving, spreading her blows so some land lower on the thigh, some higher, some on the edge of the buttock, but Merrill knows what she likes and whispers “there, there” when Isabela hits the sweet spot just at the lower swell of the buttock where arse meets thigh, because _that’s_ where Merrill likes it, even when the strikes grow harder, harder, rocking her into the mattress with the weight of impact. Her shoulders forward, face tilted, moans too big for her mouth, and everything’s a delightful blur outside this narrow range of Isabela’s hand, Merrill’s arse, the red heat spreading across her backside and dripping down into her cunt.

Isabela says the sweetest things, the dirtiest things— Merrill would blush down to her bones except all her blood seems centered in her arse right now.

“You smell like sex and flowers. If I could bottle up your cunny and sell it, merchants from Antiva to Orlais would pay through the nose, just for a sniff.” And there’s a joke there, maybe, but Merrill’s too far into her own head to chase it down, only knows that Isabela’s voice is lovely, Isabela smells like salt and leather and her words glitter bright and sharp like breaking waves and mirrors and Merrill wants nothing more to stay here in her lap while she keeps talking. “You’re such a pale thing, sweetness, I didn’t know you could get any paler— but your arse shines like the moon. Now it’s more of a _red_ glow, but whatever. I’m no poet.” A quicksilver laugh, and Merrill feels Isabela’s hand bracing into her, fingers spread wide across the span of her back, and she knows the next hit will be hard, harder than the rest—

And it _is_. Rings in her ears. Brutal on the inflamed flesh, all the previous slaps having gotten the blood flowing, flowing— and Merrill knows blood, knows the power and the pleasure and the living force of it, knows that Isabela sings deep down through her marrow— and Merrill howls into the mattress. Face wet and shining, mouth open, all her bottled fears and little pains expelled in a torrent of tears as pain and pleasure somehow set everything free, loose and rushing and cathartic.

“Kitten? Kitten?” Isabela says, and it’s distant, distorted. Like a song sung underwater, slow hazy waves of it just bubbling to the surface in bits and bursts. She rubs Merrill’s arse, and it should be soothing, comforting, but it stings too, the flesh still sensitive.

Merrill could just flop there, bask in the warm red waves of it, but truly, she should be responsible. Check in with Isabela, see how Isabela feels about this.

(Merrill already knows how _she_ feels; utterly lovely, utterly spent. But this is a gift that keeps giving, replenishes something deep and essential in her.)

“Isabela, I feel good. I feel _wonderful_. You feel so good—”

An insistent rapping on their door, an unfamiliar voice calling, “Hello? Is everyone okay there?”

Isabela tenses, thighs flexed beneath Merrill’s belly, and Merrill bites down a fresh wave of giggles. Her tongue is wet, so wet— she’s half-surprised she didn’t drool on herself, but that was why she kept her face tilted. She feels lovely, still floating on some inner sea of contentment. Captain of her own vessel.

She giggles again.

“I should… go get that, I think,” Merrill says, sliding off Isabela’s lap and picking up Isabela’s discarded shirt. She tugs it overhead, the cloth fluttering loose and baggy off her smaller frame. At least it’s long enough she doesn’t need pants. She stumbles to the door, cracks it open and smiles brightly at the elf outside. Tall woman, broad shoulders and thick hands, hair bound back with a thick scarf. Merrill vaguely recognizes her as one of the neighbors.

“Is everything alright, Miss Dalish?” the woman asks, gaze flicking over her. Merrill can just imagine the mess she looks— hair askew, face flushed, eyes wet. Bare feet and wearing clothing that doesn’t fit. But the woman’s trying, she is, and Merrill can’t help liking her for it. Like the alienage’s own version of Aveline.

“I am quite all right,” Merrill says, stroking the back of the door. The smooth grain of the wood traces reassurance in her fingers. “Thank you for checking on me, I was— thoughtless. I shall try to keep it down.”

The woman’s mouth tightens, arms crossed. A sock dangles from one hand, some heavy weight balled into the toe. Her eyes crease sharp, appraising. “Well. As long as you’re fine.” And she can’t step closer, not without bowling Merrill over to get into the house, but she lowers her voice. Jerks her chin. “If that changes, I’m Sam. Blue door across the way there.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Merrill says politely, because kindness always deserves courtesy, and she tries for another reassuring smile before closing the door.

Isabela flops off the bed, hair hanging to the floor. “Oof. That’s a good neighbor, there.”

“I’m sorry for the interruption.”

Isabela snorts, shaking her head. Flips herself back onto the bed, sprawling back on the pillow. “Not your fault. And if things _had_ been bad, better a nosy neighbor than no one.”

Merrill pulls off her shirt and tucks herself into Isabela’s arm, curling over her lap as Isabela straightens up. “I would still like to play, if you do…?”

Isabela chuckles, resting a hand on Merrill’s back, stroking up the little ridges of Merrill’s spine. “Of course, kitten. As long as you keep it down.”

“I would still like to come,” Merrill murmurs into the sheets. There’s still some hazy disconnect between thought and action, her mind sending little nerve-impulses dancing down to tell her arm and then her hand and then her fingers to move into position, and there should be some sort of static-tingle from all this lightning dancing through her, but there’s nothing. Only the warm and hazy peace of it, but her hand obeys her thoughts and she wriggles it between her legs, propping her arse up even higher on Isabela’s leg so she can wedge her fingers at the arch of her clit. Can’t pull back the hood from this angle, but this sort of dull pressure is more than enough, fingers moving in a broad circle with more force than finesse. She likes it rough, she does, especially when thinking of Isabela’s fingers, Isabela’s hand all ground up against her core... “Please, Isabela. I want your fingers in me.”

Isabela traces a finger up Merrill’s thigh, over the pale lines of old scars and the little dips and valleys of flesh. Over the swell of Merrill’s arse again, then down to the hip, like she’s studying all her odd angles and jutting bits, like Merrill’s not just aching for touch.

Merrill shivers. Puts iron in her voice. “Isabela. Please. Stop playing.”

“But I love playing with you, sweet thing,” Isabela coos, but she lifts her hand— and before Merrill can protest, there’s the wet smacking of tongue and lips. Merrill shivers anticipation as Isabela slides a newly-slick finger between her legs, trailing through the puffy outer labia and dipping into that wet mess of need, teasing through the folds. “Oh kitten, you’re sopping wet already. You hardly needed that extra time, did you?” Her wrist curves up, palm of her hand warm between Merrill’s buttocks, and it’s so close to the spanking but such a different motion. It still has enough echo to make her skin tingle.

“Mm,” Merrill says, and it’s not disagreement, but she still shivers as finally, finally Isabela slips a finger inside her. She feels all on display, bent over like this with Isabela’s fingers in her cunt. She still ruts into her own hand, two fingers down to frame her clit, something a little less direct because oh, oh, she just might come like this…

Isabela thrusts, rocks. Slips a second finger in and it slides like a dream, fits inside her sweet and lovely. Like a key in a lock— no, Merrill changes her mind, like a pick in a lock, because it’s not just some stiff and stationary thing but _movement_ , lovely, adapting to the clench of her inner walls, a curling thrust and she hardly needs to speak but Isabela reads her moans like tumblers clicking in place, the quiver of her body and the sweat that sticks them together. It’s alchemy, two parts coming together to create something greater, it’s a swelling crest and the ocean in her veins, it’s a song and a shout and a thousand and one things crashing together.

She _comes._

Isabela twists her hand, spreads her fingers and it stirs some deep response in her, a slick squeeze that has Isabela laughing, sliding out and licking her fingers. “So sweet, Merrill. Would you like some more?”

“Oh, yes. But no, no thank you,” Merrill sighs. “If I come again I won’t have any energy for you, now will I? And that would be such a shame.”

“Mm, such a shame,” Isabela agrees. She pats Merrill’s arse again, but it’s warm now, just warm and sore, nothing too tender. Just a whisper of heat, nothing that will bruise or make her cry.

(Which is exactly why Merrill likes spanking; no marks or bruises, not unless you’re really trying.)

Merrill rolls sideways, and it’s not very much bed (or very much lap) until she’s about to tumble to the floor, but she puts out her hands to catch herself and Isabela puts a hand under her arm, and Merrill teeter-walks her way to standing.

Isabela pushes herself back on the bed, knees spread wide. She is dark and lovely, and Merrill loves her fiercely, all her generous curves and the swell of her belly and thighs. She thinks maybe she should try eating a little more, eat a little better so she can be as warm and lovely and full as Isabela, but there’s really no time for thinking those things if she wants to please Isabela. So she kneels on the mattress, propping herself between Isabela’s legs and diving in with her mouth and tongue. That gold piercing runs alarmingly close to Isabela’s clit, a vertical bar through the top of her clitoral hood, but the smooth metal ball of it tastes sweet and warm, one of Isabela’s hidden treasures. And it brings Isabela such pleasure, even a tiny flick of Merrill’s tongue fluttering close, and maybe that’s the trick of it— it amplifies everything. Small laps of the tongue drag against Isabela’s folds, jostle against her clit and Merrill has to wedge her elbow against Isabela’s knee to push back when Isabela starts clenching. It might be a sweet death, smothered by Isabela’s thighs, but Merrill quite likes breathing.

“Sorry, sweet,” but Isabela doesn’t sound sorry at all, or maybe only as sorry as as cat with a bowlful of cream, because she laughs again and Merrill retaliates by wrapping her mouth around Isabela’s clit, the metal clicking against her teeth before she draws her lips to blunt the edges. Isabela yelps, but it’s quickly followed by a delighted, “ _Kitten!_ ” so Merrill doesn’t bother apologizing, only laps more, more. Big sloppy enthusiasm, figuring out the waves and rolls of Isabela’s body, darting her tongue down to taste Isabela’s very core. She tastes sweet and tangy and faintly musky, like some warm spice that Merrill can’t quite recall. She’d have thought Isabela would taste like the ocean but then again it’s _Isabela,_ and she is a person even more than a force of nature.

But person, force of nature, sea captain and lover and best friend, all of Isabela’s selves come together in one long yowl, one hand gripped tight in Merrill’s hair and the other clenching into the bed, twisting the covers so tight that Merrill feels them pull beneath her belly. The white-taut feel of her scalp being pulled just makes Merrill go harder, focus her tongue into tiny darts and hard thrusts against the clit, and it takes all her strength to keep herself on top of Isabela’s thrashing body as Isabela spills curses like exotic coins, a thoroughly educational litany of vulgarity. Merrill vaguely wants to take notes, except that would require untangling from Isabela.

“Oh _sweetness._ You’re a delight.” Isabela laughs breathlessly, a big belly-roll of flesh and jiggle as she flops back, her knees falling to the side.

Merrill kisses the soft crinkles of Isabela’s pubic hair, then rises up to lay a kiss on Isabela’s breast. Then the other, so it won’t get lonely. “So are you! I loved every moment, Isabela. Could we do it again? Maybe?”

“Already? I think I might need a nap first. Maybe some grapes.”

Merrill giggles, straddling Isabela’s waist and setting her hands on Isabela’s shoulders, dipping to kiss her. She tastes faintly bitter, like beer and malt, but that’s alright, that’s just part of the lovely nature of kissing Isabela. “I don’t mean right away. I mean anytime. We don’t have to call it love. I know you worry about me, but I just love being with you like this and feeling this way whether it’s friends who fuck or friends who don’t and—”

“Kitten…” Isabela’s voice trails, and she shifts. Changes direction, alters course, and Merrill doesn’t know the stars that map her path but maybe that’s just another of the little things that Merrill has to learn about Isabela. “I hope I’ll always deserve your friendship.” And with her eyes shut like this, her thighs tensed like that, it’s like Isabela’s always poised to run, or maybe that’s the problem with having sea-legs on land— always braced for the next wave to hit, for the next thing that will knock you down. There’s a safety in constant movement, any traveling Dalish can tell you that, but that only works as long as you have family at your back.

“It is freely given,” Merrill says. The heart is a muscle like any other, growing stronger with practice— and even if Isabela says she doesn’t do love very well, that’s okay. Merrill loves her anyway, for all of her reasons.

. . .

They sleep in secret places, cradled in the dark womb of the earth and miles below some gnawed fingernail-scrap of moon. Merrill’s blood ebbs and flows, eternal renewal in its own lunar phase. She cuddles up against Isabela, back to the wall and her cold hands over Isabela’s belly. The dark and unknown isn’t what scares Merrill, truly; the dark is no less scary than the light, the moon no less kind than the sun. There may be things _in_ the dark, but that is not the dark’s fault.

Merrill thinks that wouldn’t comfort Hawke very much.

“When we’re out of here,” Hawke drones, voice scratchy. She’s slumped over her knees. “I’m going to scrub for a _week_. Use up a whole container of those fizzy salts. Soak in the bath. Just _sit_ there until I’m all pruney. Eat _three_ wheels of cheese.” Her stomach gurgles, an awful, hollow sound, skin scraping itself about the edges. Hawke’s a big girl, big eater, always starting her second serving before anyone else has finished their first, and their scant rations don’t even have the benefit of _taste_ to make them more appealing. Or maybe that’s a mixed blessing; hard to want more when ‘more’ just means another slice of stale bread, another mouthful of dry jerky.

Varric caresses Bianca’s stock. Merrill would call it fondling, except that Varric’s a gentleman (however much he protests otherwise) and she knows he’d never commit such an indignity in semi-public. “I’m going to murder Bartrand,” he mutters.

Hawke snorts. “No, no, you’re repeating yourself…”

“Trouble sleeping, kitten?” Isabela murmurs, pressing her hands over Merrill’s. Her hands are warm, so warm— Merrill’s fingers must be icicles, the way Isabela keeps trying to rub the life back into them. Short nails and hard pillows of callus beneath her thumb, Isabela’s copper bangles pressing cold against her skin. Isabela always complains about how they turn green when she sweats, but Merrill rather likes the clouded patina— it’s the same green as beach glass and muddied ocean, the salt in her crying for the sea.

Merill shakes her head, rubbing her nose into Isabela’s shoulder. “No. Just… thinking it’s nice.” Easy to bury herself in the warm spice of Isabela’s hair, the way the oils linger on the scalp.

“Nice, hm? You are disgustingly positive.” Isabela chuckles. Squeezes. “I like it.”

“Well… we’re alive. There’s no one else I’d rather be stuck with than you.” Merrill nibbles her lip, tongue stumbling around one great truth and spitting up another instead. “And you smell nice.”

“Aw, thank you kitten.”

Merrill kisses the back of her neck, and Isabela wriggles her hips, snaking one foot over Merrill’s ankles.

They sleep together, warm and sweet.

. . .

They make it home, after long days in the dark and the dank, Merrill’s flickering mage-light their only company as they conserve their torches, as they traverse deep caverns and ruins in the bones of the earth, fight their way up to the heavy Kirkwall sun—

Hawke drops to her knees, a melodramatic croak as she juts her hands skyward, crying, “Freedom!” before bending to kiss the earth. Sandy-lipped and sputtering, she tugs Varric into an immense bearhug, lifting him off his feet. She then kisses Isabela’s cheek and Merrill’s mouth, still blinking under the brutal light of the new sun.

It comes as painful anticlimax, then, to find Bethany’s gone to the circle, and Merrill clutches her staff, and she does not _hide_ but she does shrink, and Isabela stands in front of her as if she were a wall and not a person.

Hawke buries herself in all her new affairs and responsibilities, the deeds and lands and endless bouts of meetings that her mother insists she sits on, and at the end of the week Hawke is the richer by one mansion.

(It does not make up for the loss of her sister; this Merrill knows, holding Hawke’s hand tight by the firelight, the way Hawke staunchly refuses to cry until she’s weak before the gates of sleep. Merrill tucks herself into Hawke’s lap and folds her hands across her shoulders and sings old Dalish lullabies.)

In the end, Hawke pastes on that same brittle-glass smile that fulfilled a witch’s promise, and crawls from her grief. Shed, but still there; a dry husk, like a dragonfly from its larval skin. She finds new pleasures, new advantages to living in Hightown.

First of all, Hawke’s pantry is _much_ larger now, and while Merrill never actually gets lost she never goes unaccompanied either. Isabela always comes right behind her. And no matter how kindly Bodahn tries to let them in each time, Isabela always waves him away and then resumes picking the lock.

Second of all, the food is _much_ fancier. Every time they go, Merrill spies new treats. She and Isabela nibble their way through creamed honey with vanilla, carefully licked off fingers and breasts, then small blocks of dusty-bitter chocolate. There’s expensive wine, all oaky and tannic and complex and a half-dozen other words that the rich must have simply made up in order to demonstrate their exquisite taste and bottomless purses, but really Merrill prefers hers sweeter, even if Isabela gives an appreciative _woof_ and continues drinking straight from the bottle. There are bitter olives stuffed with tiny cloves of garlic, and Merrill takes an extra block of cheese and a dozen apples. Isabela gleefully helps her load up, piling jars of preserves into Merrill’s little pack until it’s soon full to bursting.

Hawke leans in the doorway with an indulgent sigh. “Bela? Do you _really_ have to pick the lock each time? The neighbors will talk.”

“Mm.” Isabela picks a piece of garlic from between her teeth. Licks her canines. “Let them.”

Merrill just licks honey off her fingers.

. . .

Family is an open circle, a friendly arm, a light in the dark.

Marethari enters the alienage like a queen, but that is wrong— she is of the People, and enters the alienage like a mother.

And like a wayward child, Merrill hides in the shadows of her little doorway, watches the other elves bend to her, the lights in their eyes and the way they bend knee. Lost, hungry, still only half-aware of what they’ve lost. Merrill knows that hunger, those little scraps of need and recognition and how to these poor city elves the Dalish represent countless mystery and sacred traditions, but Merrill knows how little those truly mean, how so much has already been lost, lost. An untold toll of years and loss and a fragmented diaspora, but Merrill also knows none of the elves have bowed to her either. She is but one more lost soul among the many, just as much an outsider among them as among her clan.

(She never did ask why they paint the vhenadahl.)

But when Marethari stops by the vhenadahl and pays her respects at the lighted candle— ah, maybe that is part of it, some peach-pit secret nestled deep within her, a promise of sweeter futures. The alienage is different, yes, but they hold their own custom. The vhenadahl’s shadow stretches long fingers, brushes Merrill’s step.

Marethari spares few words for her, saves her talk for Hawke. Poor Feynriel needs help and Merrill sees that silver thread, so simple: Feynriel needs help. Feynriel is of the People, no matter that he’s human-blooded. Family is family. Marethari will not be the one to cut that tie.

Not for someone who still might be saved.

Merrill walks the Fade with Hawke, Isabela, Varric. She has made her bargains and her peace. She knows that there are prices worth paying.

So when the demon whispers, calls her scion of the Dalish, savior of elvenkind—

Merrill cannot put Hawke before the fate of her people.

. . .

“Ouch, love,” Isabela says, thumping her way into Merrill’s cupboard. She wrinkles her nose at the one clean cup left, but makes tea anyways. Peppermint and honey for sweet dreams— as if Merrill can sleep.

(The mirror whispers to her, sometimes. She has not yet decided if she wants to follow or ignore it.)

“At least you did it for your people. Me? I betrayed Hawke for a sodding boat.” She rolls her eyes, scooting close and sliding the mug to Merrill. The cheap clay scrapes against the wooden table. “It wouldn’t be such a bother if she weren’t so _forgiving_ about it all.”

Merrill raises the mug and sips. Passes the cup with Isabela, drinking from where her lips touched the rim.

“I think that’s the trick about forgiveness— it’s never earned. It’s only given.” Another pass, another sip. Merrill lifts her leg, slides and half-crawls her way into Isabela’s lap, nestling into the curve of her arm. “It’s in the name.”

Isabela folds Merrill into her arms, rocking. “Thinking deep thoughts, kitten?”

“Marethari… she didn’t speak to me. Only Hawke.”

“I don’t think she’s ready to forgive.”

“I’m not expecting her to. I— I _know_ the way home.” It’s simple as a ball of string, and it’s easy to step over all these doubts and certainties and all the time and blood and research she’s done, to dodge these walls and the oppressive way the city presses in, in, in, the stink of Lowtown and the feeling of being an outsider even in the alienage. She knows the way home. She just has to follow Marethari, admit she was wrong, admit her _goal_ was wrong, that there was nothing worthwhile in what she’s done, that she never truly knew what she was bargaining or the price and the cost and that some doors will remain forever locked—

She shivers, jerks. Drop the cup.

Clay shatters on the floor.

She slides off Isabela’s lap and grabs her broom, already sweeping it up before Isabela even has a chance to rise. “Merrill, no—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I’m doing it, I’m taking care of it—” because she can’t sweep up all those painful accusations and the loss of family, but this is one small thing within her control.

“I’m wearing boots, sweet thing. Don’t want to cut your feet—”

“Isabela, I’m _fine_.” And she is, she truly is, piles up the shards and drops them clattering into her wastebin, and there’s nothing left of that clumsy accident but a damp spot that Merrill rubs with her foot. “I’m sorry, I’m just— you’re always here to make me feel better, and I just—” The words stutter in her mouth, grow moth-wings and fill her lungs with dust and flutter. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Kitten, you don’t have to apologize for everything,” Isabela says. She takes Merrill’s hand, squeezes. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

It’s been so long since Merrill’s never been sorry for anything. Her heart opens up like a flower, some bright-petaled thing that only wants to soak the glow of Isabela’s regard.

“Well… I’m sorry I can’t get you a boat,” Merrill says, or means to say, but she hiccups on the last word.

Isabela gives a green-grape laugh, tart and clustered. “I’ll accept other offers.” She’s kind enough to pretend not to notice Merrill’s tears, even as Merrill blots them on her shirt.

“Well, let’s make it easy!” Merrill says brightly. “I can’t get you a boat— not yet, at least, though I’ll be happy to try— but I promise to get you more wobble-kneed and fuck-silly than any desire demon. Deal?”

“Ooh, _temptation_.”

They go back to Merrill’s house, this little piece of sanctuary in a place that isn’t hers, but that might be the secret of places, houses, homes— live in them and that life rubs off. Merrill’s scraped herself thin between blood and magic and eluvian and Hawke’s half-mad adventures into the wild blue nothing, but Isabela’s a sweet and jammy sort of person. Merrill just wants to lick her up and spread her to all the corners of her sad little biscuit of a life, and that metaphor got dreadfully messy and somewhat unsanitary so Merrill promptly ignores it.

She tries to pull Isabela, but it’s hard to pull a woman who’s already _going_ the same place Merrill wants, so they struggle with hands and feet like two green dancers struggling to lead, all knock-kneed bumping and Merrill’s bony hip landing in Isabela’s generous thigh, so Isabela finally laughs and lowers her hands, flips them palms-up and wrists exposed and growls, “Take me, kitten.”

Merrill fastens her hands about Isabela’s wrists, pulls and pushes her to the mattress. Isabela is stronger than Merrill, could resist as easy as setting back her heels and rolling her eyes, but that’s part of the joy of it; Isabela obeys because she _wants_ to, because Merrill cannot force her if she tried.

“Be still,” Merrill says, stern as she knows how. She taps the pillow and Isabela grips obligingly, elbows jutting up and her bosom heaving. Merrill licks her fingers and loosens the stays of Isabela’s bodice, then the ties that keep Isabela’s cleavage in check. She does it slow and sure, the cords slipping beneath her fingers. Old memories stir; flower crowns and daisy chains, the sweet green crush of life sticking to her palms. Isabela’s legs part like unfurled petals, opening up with a sigh as Merrill slides her hands beneath the edge of her tunic, skimming up that smooth expanse of thigh and the curve of the hip. She tugs down on Isabela’s smallclothes, then leans forward on impulse and makes a soft “ _grr_ ” as she seizes it between her teeth, tugging down, down—

And then she gets stuck somewhere around Isabela’s knees and has to drop it, running her tongue along the edge of her teeth as Isabela billows with laughter, and her squirming makes it harder to pull Isabela’s underwear off the rest of the way. Merrill manages to get one boot free of the offending garment but then gives up on the other, leaving the scarlet panties flapping around Isabela’s ankle.

“Oh kitten, you’re no puppy,” Isabela teases, wriggling her elbows. Cheeky reminder that she hasn’t moved.

“I would like to play with you,” Merrill says, breathless, as if the rapid flutter-beat of her heart has shattered her lungs. “If you hold the pillow and don’t let go, I promise you something very nice.”

“Is it orgasms? I do love orgasms!”

Merrill giggles, straddling Isabela’s hips. The worn fabric of her leggings chafes against Isabela’s shirt, a tiny bit of friction that adds to the wonderful feeling of warmth between them. Isabela’s better than a hot brick in winter, soft and lovely and all sorts of fun to cuddle and kiss. “Orgasms eventually, yes. And I want to try the hot hand, cold hand trick, if you…?”

“Oh yes, I _love_ the hot hand, cold hand trick,” Isabela laughs, such a wild spray of joy that Merrill can taste the salt off her lips. “Warriors may have _stamina,_ rogues may have _dexterity_ , but you mages definitely know the best _tricks_ …” She hushes as Merrill sets a finger to her lips, and pops them open obediently. She flutters her lashes at Merrill, flagrantly innocent as she wraps her mouth around that digit, then the other, sucking Merrill’s two fingers. Her tongue scrapes wet against Merrill’s short-bit nails.

Merrill purses her lips, calling forth a tiny flicker of mana to manifest a gentle chill along her hand. Just the one hand in Isabela’s mouth, and that little drop in temperature suddenly makes Isabela’s mouth feel even warmer, wet and welcoming, and Isabela moans deep in her throat as she bobs her head forward, swallowing down Merrill’s fingers until her lips bump the knuckles. Merrill chuckles, pulling back her hand so that her cold-wet fingers gleam in the dim light, inches from Isabela’s half-lidded eyes.

“Ooh, love. That would be such a tasty treat in high summer. Sweet elf maiden, lightly frosted.”

Merrill tilts her head. “I’m pretty sure I’m not a maiden anymore.”

“Still a sweet young thing, never mind that pesky virginity.”

Once again Merrill silences her with two fingers to her lips, this time with the warm hand. Sufficiently wet, she traces her hands down Isabela’s body, small whorls and stipples of tongue and hands against Isabela’s neck, her cleavage. There is no method beyond Merrill’s own wonder, trying new patterns against Isabela’s skin— the way the flesh prickles beneath the cold hand, then how Isabela shivers as Merrill blows gently against that cold-wet spot, followed by a soothing stroke of warm palm on chilled flesh, an exploration in temperatures and delight. Merrill tries to keep it varied, unpredictable— too much of a rhythm and Isabela starts to snore, but it’s more satisfying to ruck Isabela’s shirt up over her belly as Merrill slides down, then to place both hands on Isabela’s warm belly, thumbs touching just above the navel, fingers splayed like a butterfly. Something stark and lovely, with Merrill’s pale hands against Isabela’s brown skin, like sunlight flashing off dark water. Isabela shivers beneath her, body in quake and swell. 

Merrill brushes her fingers down as Isabela tightens her grip on the pillow. An icy touch on the bone of the hip, a warm kiss, and then Merrill twirls her warm fingers into the thick crinkle of Isabela’s pubic hair. She tugs, spreading her lips open, warm and inviting— and Isabela smells like salt and tang and heat. Isabela always says it’s just skin, just affection, nothing too deep— some fragile precipice before things drop off into darkness, but Merrill doesn’t mind. ‘Just’ skin, ‘just’ affection, is just enough. Especially because Isabela’s beautiful like this (beautiful like anything) when she’s swearing, thighs clamped over Merrill’s shoulders and honey-edged vulgarity drips from her mouth as Merrill licks, nibbles, sucks. Merrill flutters her tongue around Isabela’s clit, slipping over the piercing. Nothing too direct until Isabela groans, cants her hips and Merrill bears down, warm and wet and blood hammering her ears as Isabela moans and sighs and lilts her voice in rising hallelujah—

Merrill stops.

Isabela breaks. “Andraste’s flaming arse, Merrill! Why did you stop?!” she begs, half a scream and half a cry, face damp and lashes thick.

“I promised you orgasms. Eventually.” Merrill props an elbow on Isabela’s thigh, and drums her icy fingers against Isabela’s knee. “I want to build you up some more. Unless you’d rather…?”

“Kitten, no. I’ll be fine—” She hisses, trembles. Merrill had been trailing those cold fingers up Isabela’s thigh, towards the warm heat of her cunt, and Isabela groans. “No, wait, do that. That can be fun.”

“If I stop every time you say ‘no,’ it will break the rhythm,” Merrill says, nibbling at her thumb. The cold one; it makes her lips tingle. “I do want to stop if it’s too much, but perhaps another watchword…?”

“Religion,” Isabela says, as easily as if she’s done this before. And perhaps she has; Merrill’s never asked, but she files that away for another post-coital conversation. It’s all a form of play, sweet as a wreath of daisies. Serious as lilies at a funeral. “If I say ‘religion’ in bed, you know I’ve either gone daft or had enough.”

“So I should keep going?”

Isabela crackles with laughter, lightning-edged and radiant. “Yes!”

Merrill laps her tongue over Isabela’s clit, using her chilled thumb to tug up the hood, to blunt the edge of orgasm as she laps, swirls, sucks. Clamps her lips over Isabela’s clit, an edge of teeth against the metal stud, cheeks mashed against Isabela’s thighs. She swirls her tongue, tickles through Isabela’s wet folds and dips lower. Her tongue’s a shallow thing, not anywhere near as strong or forceful as fingers, but she slips to taste Isabela’s core, cold thumb pressed hard over Isabela’s clit in a shivering chatter as she squeezes her warm hand under Isabela’s arse. Hot and cold, opposite poles— and Isabela warm and wet between them, flowing.

Isabela shudders and sighs, slick around Merrill’s tongue. Merrill stops, again— and Isabela groans, quivers, but does not break this time. Only digs her heels into the bed, bumping against Merrill’s chin with a smear of musk and heat. Merrill grins over the swell of Isabela’s belly, the soft billows of flesh, and slips two cold fingers into Isabela’s core, her thumb on the clit. She wraps her legs around Isabela’s muscular thigh, grinding down against her as she works her hand. Slow, even rolls of her thumb, cold enough to prickle but pressed right up against where Isabela likes it, something to keep the excitement from fully dying.

“Like licking a lamp-post in winter,” Isabela chuckles. She shivers, teeth chattering and sending a truly impressive jiggle through her breasts.

Merrill watches, fascinated. “Have you? Licked a lamp-post in winter, I mean?” This is going to cramp her hand something fierce, but Merrill already knows she’s not going to be keeping this up for long.

“Oh, yes. But I haven’t gotten _stuck_.” Isabela waggles her eyebrows, fierce and teasing. “Wouldn’t mind getting stuck on you.”

Merrill giggles, pulling her fingers from Isabela. She sucks them clean; Isabela tastes lovely, still that salt and tang and an edge of something sweet, like those red-fleshed papayas that Isabela sometimes buys from the market and splits on the table, scooping out juicy handfuls into Merrill’s open mouth. Merrill dives in again, nose squished against Isabela’s belly before she wriggles back into place. It’s easier with her mouth than her hands, even though she misses watching Isabela’s face. It’s a fair price though, especially because it’s becoming easier, each time— those small embers of excitement fan up again so easily, each thwarted orgasm rattling up, each failed echo trying harder to ring true. They fizz beneath her tongue, all frantic bubbles struggling to burst free…

So it’s with great pleasure that as Isabela sighs, moans, toes curling into the blankets and body arching, pulling taut, that Merrill _stops_.

“ _Kitten.”_ Isabela moans it like a curse, eyes screwed shut as she pulls at the pillow. Stretches the fabric, as if she might rip it. “Kitten, how much longer?”

“Last one,” Merrill says, kissing Isabela’s sodden curls. “You’ve done very well. You haven’t let go, and you’ve been awfully patient. More patient than I would be, honestly.”

It’s like rolling a snowball downhill, all energy and momentum— Merrill’s mouth on Isabela’s clit, two fingers inside the warm clench of Isabela’s cunt, curling up to press her intimate spots. Hardly needs any motion, any trigger beyond Isabela’s own tremors and Merrill kisses and laps and loves, and loves and loves, and there’s cum smeared across her chin and lips but that’s all right, that’s not anywhere near the mess that Isabela leaves on the soaked sheets as finally Merrill allows Isabela to _come_ with a ululating cry.

Isabela flops right after, laughing, warm and jelly-legged, her body streaked damp and silver with sweat and orgasm.

Merrill dabs her mouth on the covers, grinning so hard her cheeks ache. “Was that good?” she asks, letting the power ebb from her hands. Now they are nothing more than skin-warm, palms flat against Isabela’s belly to feel the jump of breath and muscle.

“Kitten that was _great_.” Isabela’s laugh is sweet as stolen fruit, rich and golden. Merrill cuddles up into the curve of her arm, head pillowed on Isabela’s shoulder. “I’m not so keen on that denial bit, but it was _tremendous_ fun to try.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Merrill confesses. “I’ve never tried that with anyone before.”

“I make a principle of not denying myself anything, sweetness.” Isabela twists sideways, kissing Merrill’s forehead. “But for you? I’ll try anything once.”

. . .

Try anything once: Steal a book, give a book. Isabela’s always honest, in her own way.

Merrill always trusted Isabela to come back. Even through all the blood and smoke and ashes in the air, settled into her hair and mixing like a fine dandruff of grey ghosts and memory of flame, Merrill always trusted Isabela to come back. Their paired bodies, their tatter-thread tapestry of want and love and life, all inevitable as collision, as death, as a summer storm when you already taste the lightning in your teeth. Every action has equal and opposite reaction, spinning kinetic forces and electricity and magnetism and a thousand and one things that may as well be magic, unseen but powerful, all obeying their own laws.

This is the truth of it: Isabela came back.

“How can you forgive me?” Isabela asked, voice cracking.

And Hawke— lovely, bleeding, messy Hawke, her clothes soaked red as that ridiculous paint across her nose, coughing up scarlet streaked with the dull brown of old coffee— gave a crack-ribbed smile, white and gleaming. “Nothing to forgive, love.”

Aveline opened her mouth, then snapped shut, lips twisted into a bright-copper lock.

Merrill did not bother checking anyone else’s reaction.

Merrill understood, and walked Isabela home. _Her_ home, in the alienage. The Qunari had left it surprisingly untouched, or at least no more touched than it normally was, even in times of so-called peace and relative comfort. Strange mercy, this; Merrill can already see the shape of things in months to come, the city’s destruction and the way that those with little will take from those with even less. The Arishok had granted sanctuary to two elves, had taken more willing converts seeking certainty of place and value. The shem could so easily see that as betrayal.

But those are for the weeks and months ahead.

This is now.

“It is not good to be alone,” she says softly, tucking Isabela into a chair and boiling water for tea. She chooses mint and honey, for sweet dreams. They’ll need all the sweetness they can get.

“I was so _selfish_.”

“You were scared,” Merrill says, wrapping her arms around Isabela’s shoulders. Merrill would tuck herself into a tiny, purring ball and crawl into Isabela’s lap if she thought it would help, but it wouldn’t. And then the kettle would scream and Merrill would have to get up anyway. So she simply wraps herself around Isabela, a living shawl of bony limbs and tattoos. “Everyone is allowed to feel scared.”

Isabela stares at her hands. “I was a monster,” she says, but the words click false off her teeth, like cold clay echoes of someone else’s voice.

Merrill thinks of Anders, sharing his body with a spirit who was once his friend, and all the ways that grief can devour. She thinks of Fenris pulling out a man’s beating heart, body stained with rage and lyrium. She thinks of blood shed and blood saved, the bright ring of sword off shield and Aveline, triumphant, ringed in corpses at the center of a grim mosaic. All the mistakes they’ve made to get here, to make it right.

“Sometimes I think there are too many ways to be monstrous.” She butts her head against Isabela’s cheek, close enough to smell the sour sweat of fear and lingering copper and iron, the ash that still clings everywhere. “Monsters are the things that scare us, not just the things we do when scared.”

The kettle sings, high and angry.

Merrill rises. She returns with two chipped mugs of steaming tea, and sets them down on the table with a heavy clink. “You were scared. Everyone is allowed to be scared.”

. . .

Isabela visits Hawke— not every day, that would be too predictable, too much like a _schedule—_ but Merrill makes sure to accompany her each time, to squeeze her hands and sit quietly in the corner reading while Isabela stumbles her way to an apology. Hawke accepts, and forgives, and Isabela bites her lip and wads the blankets with her fists and so resolutely _does not_ cry as she asks how come it’s so _easy_ for Hawke, so Merrill speaks up.

“When you give things to the ocean, sometimes you get them back.”

Hawke looks over with a quicksilver grin, hair mussed in a half-dozen odd spikes and angles as she nods approvingly. Then, teasingly, asks, “Who taught you that?”

Long summer days unspool from Merrill’s tongue, bright sun and warm salt and grey sand pouring out of her in a wash of light and color. Hawke had taught her that, in those lazy days on the Wounded Coast. She’d launched tiny scrolled messages in green glass bottles, messages to distant queens and kings and sincere inquiries asking some Qunari if they really _did_ scratch their horns against trees like halla. Merrill had followed suit, setting crude boats of leaf and twig out into the surf where, inevitably, they crashed against the distant rocks, dashed to pieces.

They never received any bottles back, true, but Isabela belongs to the sea. And she came back.

It’s not love, not something so easily inked and chained to four small letters on a page, but something like fate, and fortune, and friends, and perhaps another dozen other words starting with ‘f’ if Isabela hadn’t pulled Hawke’s borrowed dictionary from under Merrill’s nose.

When they leave, Merrill tucks herself up snug against Isabela’s body, hip bumping the warm muscle of Isabela’s thigh and her gait falling in easy step with Isabela’s.

Merrill goes to the Hanged Man with Isabela, but tugs Isabela’s hand, pulling to her room.

“Isabela? I’d like to be tied up.” This is not the first time she has asked, but it is easier to focus on the simple twist of rope and bight, knots and ties, than to try unraveling the guilt of unsaid words.

“I’ll gladly tie you up, but _never_ tie you down,” Isabela says, voice still hoarse and her eyes bright, too bright, but she is warm hands and soft breath as she sits down on the bed with Merrill. Thigh to thigh, sitting sideways. This is something sweetly patient, the thin jute ropes pulled from their less-than-secret place beneath Isabela’s bed. “Over your clothes? Or skin? Or…”

“I don’t want sex,” Merrill says, and this too is not the first time she has said this, has asked and received more than skin and orgasms. “I want— I want to know you are here. So clothes, please. Something around my chest.”

There is trust in this, and love— Isabela will not bind Merrill to her if Merrill does not wish to be bound. She’ll always come back, and Merrill stays because she wishes.

So Isabela folds the rope in half, muscle memory more than conscious thought, and pulls the tails through their own loop.

Merrill stays quiet, knees together and hands primly folded in her lap. She watches each turn and fold, knows the names from each practiced repetition. This is a lark’s head knot, though it looks so little like a bird’s head but even less than a cow, so Merrill prefers this name for it over the more rural cow hitch. She raises her arms overhead, allowing Isabela to slip the loop over her hands and down her shoulders, settling above Merrill’s breasts before pulling snug. A reassuring pressure through Merrill’s shirt, a reminder that Isabela is here, Isabela is present, Isabela would never leave her alone and bound.

Each loop is an embrace as Isabela rounds the rope about Merrill’s breasts, smoothing the lines to lay them flat over Merrill’s chest. She knows each step with comforting familiarity, Isabela wrapping, tugging, pulling. Reversing tension to wrap the ropes under Merrill’s breasts now, and the crossed ropes press into Merrill’s back, softened through the layers of clothing so they do not truly bite. Then Merrill’s favorite part, as Isabela pulls up, over Merrill’s shoulder and pressing into the tender muscle where neck meets shoulder. She wraps over, then under, then over again on the ropes around Merrill’s breasts. It separates Merrill’s breasts, frames and emphasizes her modest bosom.

(Isabela has claimed this is her favorite way to see Merrill’s tits, but she says that about _every_ way she sees Merrill’s tits. Merrill knows they’re all true.)

Isabela wraps the rope across the other shoulder now, then tugs down to the central knots at Merrill’s back. She threads the ropes through, her hands warm, reassuring, bracing firm against Merrill’s back as she ties off the harness.

“Would you like anything else? Hands? Legs…?”

“Tie my hands behind my back,” Merrill says firmly, lowering her arms. She crosses them behind her back, hands gripping forearms. Making herself warm and compact; she’s not looking to feel small, but to savor the sensation and Isabela’s presence. She breathes deep through her nose as Isabela binds her arms in secure loops. She can’t feel the smooth grain of the rope against her skin, but she smells the sweet and woody scent of the oil used to treat the rope, the faint cinnamon and amber of Isabela’s hair. Isabela prickles through her skin, like the way her toes tingle after a storm or the tiny lightnings that make her hair stand on end after scuffing across thick rug. She allows her arms to hang heavy, anchored to the harness, while Isabela runs the tails through the gap between arm and body. The rope nestles snug against Merrill’s triceps, and Merrill gives a discreet wiggle.

“How are you feeling, little eel?” Isabela asks, cinching the ropes. Her voice is steadier than when they started.

“Good.” The ties are firm without being painful. There’s something wonderful about being pampered like this, and Merrill wriggles back on the bed with a happy sigh. Isabela fluffs a pillow for her, and Merrill tilts into it. “I’d like to stay like this, if you don’t mind.”

Isabela holds the ropes between her hands, rubbing her thumbs along the grain. “Would you like a drink? Snacks?”

“No. Just… talk to me.” _Stay with me_.

They stay like that, talking. Isabela tells sea stories and Merrill talks about the dapple of green sunlight through an overhead canopy, of mushroom-hunting and splashing through rivers with muddy feet.

When Merrill finally asks to be untied, Isabela massages her wrists and kisses her cheek.

“Thank you,” Isabela doesn’t say.

. . .

What is family?

(A teacher who tries to save you from yourself.)

Hawke takes responsibility for Merrill’s actions, presumes ownership that Merrill never wanted, never asked, but oh it gets them off the Sundermount without any more blood shed, so Merrill tries to find it in some small part of herself to forgive Hawke. But she’s too tired for any of this, any of that. This is a type of tired that sucks the marrow from your bones, steals the color from your eyes. The type of tired that makes you want to swallow a fistful of nails, like there’s not enough iron in your blood or sun in the sky to rid your flesh of that fog-heavy feeling. There is a piece of her, missing; Marethari was the foundation, the bedrock, the deep soil that nourished her.

So, this is her day: Wake up. Stare at ceiling. Watch the cobwebs drift, grey strands in fractionated sunlight. Forget to eat. Remember. Try to make tea. Drop the cup.

(It hits the floor in glass-shatter glitter. The Eluvian remains inert.)

Merrill lets the pieces lie, and falls back into bed.

She does not cry.

Aveline visits. She brings books, she tells Merrill that Marethari _loved_ her, but Marethari never _trusted_ her so what good does that do either of them? Aveline harumphs over the slow decay of Merrill’s home, the dust creeping into the corners and the cup still shattered on the floor. She rolls her sleeves up to the elbow and gives the house a good cleaning, scours the windows and floors as if guilt lingers in the crevices, as if it’s as easy as washing dried blood from beneath one’s nails. She leaves a fresh glass of water on the table.

(When Merrill finally remembers to drink, it’s thick with dust and stale regret.)

Varric brings string, and potted plants, and tiny oranges that peel into papery segments in his square hands. He brings sweet basil and rosemary and miniature roses that smell of absolutely nothing, each in tiny clay pots they will surely overgrow. He tsks over Merrill’s sparse pantries and leaves for an hour, or two, or however long it takes for the sun to crawl across the floor and inch its way into oblivion at the edge of the wall, and returns with a handful of elven children toting groceries. He orders them to unpack the groceries with blithe disarray; noodles and pickled eggs and pats of salty goat cheese, and tins of rich black tea with spice and honey that Merrill couldn’t possibly afford. He counts out the coins to pay each of his assistants, then pats Merrill on the back and reminds her that all daisies need food and sun.

(Caring for the plants is easier than caring for herself. Sometimes she’ll even remember to eat, after she waters them.)

Hawke comes, all bright-armor shine and wealth tucked in her fingers, her toes, the fine weave of her shirt and the new leather of her boots. She wears her hard and hungry in her bones, something in the break of her eyes. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_.

Merrill does not speak.

Hawke cannot fill the silence. She empties her pockets on the table: gold and silver coins rub cheeks with copper, all spilled with willful abandon. She leaves.

Isabela comes last, but stays longest.

What is family?

(A mother who sold you for two hands of silver.)

Isabela does not waste her time on the endless platitudes; no ‘she meant well’ or ‘she was trying to save you.’

Merrill was First of her clan, and has long stopped being a child.

. . .

Isabela sweats and swears over the tiny stove as she stews tomatoes and cinnamon and ginger with lumps of beef, the warm fragrance wafting throughout Merrill’s home like a lover’s embrace. While the stew simmers they sit out on the front stoop with Merrill’s little pots of basil and rosemary. Children kick a cloth-wrapped ball under the vhenadahl, barefoot and laughing. Isabela’s shirt sticks to her back and under her arms, and she fans herself extravagantly as she leans back against the door with an exaggerated sigh.

“Well, at least if it tastes like arse, we have good wine for after.”

Merrill traces a finger into the warm stone of her front step. “If that’s what arse smells like, I need new soap.”

“Pfft. If this turns out all right, we can try basil chicken and peppers, next time,” Isabela says, eyeing the basil with a predatory gleam.

One of the children stands nearby, hands behind her back and biting her lip. Her tongue looks twisted in knots, and Merrill checks for the ball. Still with the others, not rolled under her step, so…

Merrill smiles brightly. “Hello. Looking for something?”

The girl’s pigtails bounce against her shoulders as she shakes her head, then she stops mid-shake and nods uncertainly. “My mother asked. Asked me to ask. If we could borrow some rosemary? From your pot?”

Isabela snorts, laughing. “I don’t think we’ll want it _back_.”

Merrill can’t stop laughing either. “Of course! But really, it’s not borrowing. I shan’t want it back anyway. Would you like some basil too? I mean, we have roses but I don’t think those would taste very nice, at least not for supper.”

The girl shakes her head, eyes wide. “Just rosemary is good. Thank you, Miss Dalish.”

“Merrill. My name’s Merrill,” Merrill says gently. And shame on her, First of her clan (once, long ago, the pull of it still whorled in her blood) and member of this small place, but she doesn’t know the names of her own neighbors, when once she knew the name of every member of Clan Sabrae. “What’s your name?”

“Lina,” the girl says, bobbing an uncertain curtsy. “Sam’s my mother.” She breaks off two sprigs of rosemary, then bobs another curtsy before scampering to one of the disheveled apartments.

Merrill watches her run, and notes the door she disappears to. Blue-painted doorway, relatively fresh. A red and purple rag rug on the front step.

“So. Are you that scary, or is it because this pantsless shem’s sitting next to you?” Isabela asks, cocking her head.

Merrill nibbles her lip. Considers. “I think— I have not been a very good neighbor,” she says at last. “They are not Dalish, but they are still elves. We are still one people. And I have not been sharing as I ought.”

So Merrill shares, more and more. Lina comes back a few nights later with a chipped pot and a tiny aloe plant, barely bigger than Merrill’s thumb. Merrill gives her more fresh basil and rosemary in exchange. Some of the other neighbors start asking to break off pieces of herb and Merrill says, yes, yes, yes, over and over. She gets bits of mending in exchange, new patches on her leggings and stitchwork for a hole on the back of her shirt she hadn’t noticed, no, not at all, not until Sam is kind enough to take the shirt off her back and sew it up.

They make small talk, small truths and little stories. Sam explains that ‘Sam’ is short for another name that she never uses so it slips from memory like a loose button. Merrill sits on the floor in her breastband, knees tucked tight under her chin and telling Lina tales of the Dread Wolf.

(It isn’t until after Merrill leaves, her new-stitched shirt snug over her shoulders once more, that she realizes neither Lina or Sam had asked about the scars.)

Hawke comes by one evening, guilt stamped heavy on her brow. She forces a cracked-clay smile, pats her thumb into the damp soil of the basil, and leaves. She comes back with a wheelbarrow full of potting soil, more herbs, more clay pots. One of them is already broken from the clumsy rumble over uneven streets, but Hawke puts the shards in the bottom of another pot and covers it in soil. She mumbles something about drainage and moisture but really, Merrill knows what she’s trying to say. _There’s still something useful in the broken, Merrill._

Some tiny, forgotten part of her buds.

Merrill puts her pale hand across Hawke’s. She wonders when Hawke’s hands had felt so rough, when the skin seemed so thin, the veins a distant ocean of warm-green salt.

“Thank you for the money,” she says softly. “And the mint. And the lavender. And the chives. And—”

“And it’s not enough,” Hawke says. Her mouth cuts down, teeth stoppered to hold back a gaping wound, a red tide of apology. “I am so sorry.”

“You did what you thought was right. Marethari— did what she thought was right.” Merrill tightens her grip. Retreats when she realizes her nails are pricking Hawke’s wrists, though Hawke does not flinch. “At least my clan lives.”

There are more things they could say, reasons and excuses. Merrill can taste the arguments on her tongue, ripe and fermented— the clan should have moved on long ago, Merrill had always known that power demands a price, clan is family, what does a shem living in Hightown truly know of _loss_ , even one who has lost brother and sister and mother— but she lets them drain.

“I tried to kill you once,” Merrill says, instead.

Hawke’s brow crinkles, eyes drawn together. “When was—? Oh. That was a dream, it hardly counted.”

“If you had died in Feynriel’s dream, it would have been real.” Merrill breaks off a mint leaf, rubbing it against her thumb. “And you forgave me.”

Hawke snorts, slapping her hands together to shake off imaginary dirt. “It was nothing, kitten.”

“Maybe not to you. But it was to me,” Merill says. She pops the mint in her mouth. Chews slow. “You forgive easily. It is one of the things I love about you. And I can— I can move on. I love you. You are one of my dearest, oldest friends. My _first_ friend, in this city. But I do not think I can forgive, yet. Not until time dulls the edges.”

Merrill does not know how to cook with lavender, even though she knows it makes a lovely scent for tea and soaps and drinks, so Sam comes over one pale summer morning with her sleeves rolled up, and teaches Merill how to dry the fresh buds, then how to make a pink syrup out of boiling lavender with sugar and honey. Merrill teaches Lina star-patterns, Dalish constellations and allows the girl to trace inquisitive fingers across the ink of her tattoos as the mixture steeps. Finally, Sam tugs Lina away with a gentle word, and tells Merrill how to make lavender lemonade. 

Merrill continues getting requests for more herbs, for sprigs of rosemary and packets of mint and Merrill finally moves her pots under the vhenadahl as a community garden, something to tend and care. She starts browsing for new additions, traipses through the gardens of Hightown with Isabela, licks honeysuckle off the vine and nibbles flowers with all the joy of a second childhood. Aveline rolls her eyes and sighs when they are caught trespassing, but she rescues them each time. Finally, she gives Merrill two new pots of marigold and nasturtium as well as a stern warning to please, _please_ stop eating the nobles’ flowers.

Next time Aveline comes, Merrill serves her lavender lemonade and a fresh green salad, splintered with peppery nasturtium. Aveline smiles.

(Merrill does not tell her that Isabela had liberated the lemons from another noble’s unwatched garden.)

The other elves start contributing their own produce, and Merrill’s herbs get even exchange. A jar of blackberry jam shows up on her doorstep, then a knitted scarf. Sam teaches her how to pickle cucumbers and mint, peppers and garlic. Stitch by stitch, bite by bite, Merrill joins their lives.

And she is no healer, no— healer’s hands may be the bloodiest, but her blood has always served its own purpose— but she knows how to make an elfroot salve, how to stitch and wrap and what herbs are good for a fever, how to brew willowbark tea, to use peppermint for sour stomach and clove oil for a toothache, and knows where the wild things grow. She is no Anders, in his little clinic in Darktown, but she is no shem, either.

Finally, she asks Sam why they paint the vhenadahl.

Sam chuckles, shaking the pan as she fries little rounds of green onion bread. “The old hahren, in Highever— she said it was to remind us of who we were. There are different colors, patterns. Red is for the blood of Arlathan, the place of our people. White is… something about the sky. Crystal spires among the clouds. Magic was supposed to have come easy for us, then.” Her mouth twists, cuts down. She bites her lip, mouth lined with sutures of pain. “Keeping the tree is habit now, I suppose. Few enough remember the meaning.”

What is habit but another form of tradition?

Merrill is of the alienage.

. . .

“You are truly becoming a power, kitten.” Isabela slurps her tea. “A hand in every pie.” The table’s scattered with crumbs, remnants of the crumbly scones that Merrill picked up from the market. By happy coincidence, Isabela had brought along clotted cream and strawberry preserves; most likely pilfered from Hawke, but still a lovely gesture.

Merrill wedges herself into Isabela’s lap, lapping a stray dab of cream from Isabela’s mouth. Her arse squishes against the table, and Isabela obligingly scoots the chair back to make room. “I’d rather have your hand in my pie.”

Isabela sets her mug down— new mug, not a single chip on it— and flexes her hand thoughtfully. She holds her warm brown hand up to Merrill’s slender fingers; not much longer than Merrill’s, but thicker joints and broader palms. “Would it even fit?”

Merrill licks the tip of Isabela’s pinky. “Maybe not. Still fun to try.”

Isabela chuckles, curling her fingers between Merrill’s, palms clasped. “Ooh, dirty. I never would have figured you for a size queen.”

“The Dalish have no official monarchy,” Merrill replies, nose high in the air but that lasts all of five seconds before Isabela’s mouth curves against her neck, teeth nipping at her through the thin fabric of her blouse, and it’s a mess of heat and cloth and friction as Isabela rises to her feet, squeezing her hands under Merrill’s arse and pressing them together with a squish of soft bosom and hard muscle.

Isabela carries Merrill to her room with the ease of long practice; home is a heart-stitched map, after all. These four walls and these small rooms have become _home_ , more than just storage, and Isabela knows every barefoot and sock-clad inch of it, even the bits that are new; the rugs that soften the floors, the herbs drying from the rafters, the dozen little comforts that soften all these once-bare edges. Isabela is welcome in every chamber of her heart.

Isabela tries setting Merrill on the bed, but Merrill digs her hands into Isabela’s shoulders and clamps tight with her knees, pulling Isabela on top of her in a warm hunger. Merrill squirms out of shirt and breastband with ease, exposing her small breasts to Isabela’s eager tongue. Isabela clamps down on the nipple with her teeth, a sharp jolt that makes Merrill hiss even as Isabela blows cool air on after, but then Isabela goes up to kiss her face, hard and gentle, mouth to mouth like her teeth have forgotten they’re made of bone. This love is a scraped and playful thing, and Merrill giggles, breathes sharp— Isabela’s breath is mint and honey, her hair is cinnamon and amber— and they fit together like this, like this, fumbling hands and Isabela tossing Merrill’s clothing aside with gleeful abandon before unfastening her trousers. Merrill tries wriggling them off in one pull, but they get stuck somewhere around her calves and Isabela sits on her belly, tickling behind her knees and pulling them off the laughing, thrashing Merrill.

“Oh dear, I think giggles get you horny,” Isabela says, an exaggerated stage-whisper as she cups her hand against Merrill’s soaked underthings. Her palm grinds against Merrill’s sopping cunt, fingers curled and Merrill is so ridiculously wet that there’s hardly any friction as Isabela twists the front panel of Merrill’s smallclothes, pulling tightly so it tugs against Merrill’s swollen clit.

Merrill groans, shoving Isabela’s hips and toppling the other woman forward, squealing. “Mm. Tongue? Please? And fingers? And—”

“And fist, yes yes, I know,” Isabela laughs. “Kitten, we’ll need oil for that. Do you…?”

Merrill points beneath the bed.

“You _minx.”_ Isabela leans over the edge of the bed, arse in the air— she gives it a wiggle, for Merrill’s benefit— and withdraws the bottle of olive oil. “Want a towel? Or some rags? We’re going to get _messy_ here.”

“I have spare sheets.” Merrill bounces against the mattress, curling her fists into the pillow. “I don’t mind messy.”

Isabela hums agreement, kissing Merrill’s belly before pulling Merrill’s smallclothes off the rest of the way. “How does that saying go? A mess in the hand is worth two in the bush?”

“Now you’re just teasing,” Merrill says with mock-severity. “Captain Isabela, all hands on deck.”

“You know, I _could_ make a joke about poop decks,” Isabela grumbles. She pours a generous smear of oil into her hands, rubbing them together so her skin shines, every nook and crevice gilded smooth. It’s sweet and faintly herbal, round and full in a way that makes Merrill want to lick it off Isabela’s fingers.

Instead, Merrill considers that sentence. “I do think I would like to try anal sometime,” she says. “But not with a fist, no. At least not to start.”

“Anyone who _starts_ with a fist is lying.” Isabela kneels between Merrill’s legs, then crinkles her nose. “Lift your arse, love? We’ll want a cushion here.” Merrill obligingly lifts herself up as Isabela slides a pillow beneath her, then spreads herself wide, fingers fanned to present herself. Isabela kisses her mound, her fingers, her clit. Sets her thumb over the hood, tugging up to free that hard bud and pressing her wet lips and tongue against it as she slides one finger in, then two— Merrill struggles not to squirm, reaches down to touch Isabela’s hand but her hand slips away, smooth and oiled, so instead she tries distracting herself by squeezing her own breasts, pushing them together and pinching the nipples, like there’s anything that might keep her from bucking away from this thing she wants so much.

The first two fingers are easy, easy— the third one even, especially as Isabela laves her mouth over Merrill’s clit, pulls and sucks and tugs her into a sharp ache, dancing on edge but with no satisfaction. Her body clenches around those fingers, smooth and wet but still not enough, not enough to satisfy this deep _want_ — and then Isabela tries the fourth, and that slips in easily until Isabela bumps forward, the knuckles flush with Merrill’s entrance.

Merrill whimpers with want, with disappointment, with a tiny burst of satisfaction as she kneads her breasts more aggressively. “Is that…?”

“That’s four, kitten. I can keep it like this for now, keep licking and nibbling until you get at least one orgasm. We’ll see if that relaxes you, yes?” Isabela smirks. “You’re all wound up like clockwork. Just need to ease the tension.”

“Mm.” Merrill flutters her eyes shut, letting out a long sigh. “Yes. Orgasms sound good.”

Isabela laps at her cunt with long, slow flutters of her tongue, her fingers sliding forward, back. A leisurely pace, the oil smeared on Merrill’s thighs and Isabela’s forearm, a generous waste because oh, oh, too much is better than not enough, or maybe that too much is _never_ enough.

Merrill rocks into the bed, the warm heat of Isabela’s tongue and fingers sending little curls of flame tickling through her belly, her toes. She pinches her nipples harder, uses a bit of nail to really drive the edge in, and her mind goes glass-blank and clear and lovely as a fresh winter sky and it all slips into focus, sharp and clear and rooted in her body, in this bed, in Isabela’s strong fingers pressing in her and that hard tongue between her legs, all coming together in a crash of cymbals, sensation, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling and the warp of the boards just as she comes, and comes, and comes, and Isabela tucks her thumb into the hollow of her hand and slides _in._

It’s full and lovely, and she’s all but brimming with it now, this power, this sensation. Isabela starts to curl her fingers, twisting her hand so her palm rubs against one of Merrill’s pleasure spots, and Merrill clenches down instinctively, hard enough to make Isabela laugh with startlement.

“Kitten, what a grip!”

“Ooh. I like this,” Merrill giggles. Something tickles in the back of her mind, about what it means to surround, to envelop, to take someone in and make them a part of you— but for now it’s Isabela’s hand in her, rocking forward, back. Merrill curls her toes into the blankets, sighing as Isabela kisses her knee, then her thigh, trailing kisses like flowers before making her way back to Merrill’s clit. Each gentle rock of tongue, of hand, of Isabela’s shoulder pressed beneath her thigh, presses Merrill forward, back. Into the bed, her hair mashed into the pillow and her body gone limp and boneless. She can’t concentrate enough to roll or squeeze or pinch her tits anymore, just grips tight and slippery and lets the warm satisfaction of holding them be enough, especially as Isabela wraps her mouth around Merrill’s clit and sucks—

This orgasm hits hard, harder. All her body wrung out to this: heat, pressure. One diamond-cut moment of clarity.

Merrill rides it as long as she dares, lets it shatter around her like fragments of a dream. Aching, sore, sticky. Satisfied.

“Isabela? I think— I think I’m tired, now.”

“Don’t blame you.” Isabela kisses her mound one last time, uncurls her fingers and slips her hand out of Merrill with a wet smack of fluids, oil and slick smeared down her forearm. “More than you’re used to, hm?”

Merrill lays still, lets Isabela wipe her down with a clean cloth. Isabela hums as she cleans her breasts, then her thighs, then the smear of oil that had slipped down Merrill’s arse and back. Merrill’s never cared about stains on her sheets or not, so it hardly matters that they’ve soaked everything around them.

Isabela finally wipes down her own arms, dropping the cloth to the floor with Merrill’s discarded underthings and snuggling in next to Merrill.

Merrill sets her head against Isabela’s ample bosom. “Isabela? Would you like…?”

“I’m tired just watching you,” Isabela says with an exaggerated yawn. “Make me pancakes and we’re even.”

. . .

The next morning should have been as easy as pancakes in bed and endless flirts and giggles and Merrill tangled up in Isabela’s shirt and trailing kisses and clothing across the house, except, well—

The Chantry explodes.

By the end of the day, it comes down to these simple facts:

Isabela has a ship.

Merrill has the alienage.

There’s ash in the air, in the streets. It cakes the throat in dead prayer.

“Do you _know_ what they’ll do to an apostate, kitten?” Isabela hisses, fierce and savage, her eyes rimmed red and her hands twisted in the front of Merrill’s shirt, like she might just seize her then and there, carry her off as spoils of war, some salvaged treasure before the crows descend.

“That’s why you have to take Hawke and Bethany,” Merrill says softly, caressing Isabela’s knuckles. Beneath the vhenadahl the air is sweet, the herbs and flowers casting their own spell. Behind her, more of the elves are moving the iron gate that once locked them in at night, and now might stand as protection against the riots that will surely come. “I won’t be alone. Aveline and Donnic are staying, too.” As if Aveline would ever leave, as if Donnic would ever leave her. For all her weary sighs, Aveline loves this city, loves Merrill and Isabela and Hawke and will do whatever she can to keep them safe, whether through absence or presence. All their years together have lacquered her small irritations into something precious, like a pearl lodged in her boot.

Sam grins, all pins and needles. “We know our own too, shem. Merrill’s ours.”

Merrill traces the thin ropes of old scars, the muscles corded in Isabela’s forearm. Leans forward, breathes in the warm cinnamon and amber of her hair. And beneath it all, always, the sea.

“I know you’ll come back, love.”

For now: Isabela has to take Hawke and Bethany to safety.

Merrill has to protect the alienage.

. . .

And she does, and they do, and Isabela comes back.

And they sleep in secret places.


End file.
